RIGHT, before we begin, this is what you need to know. One light year equals the seconds in one year (31,556 926) x 186,000 (miles). Or... wait for it... 5,878,625, 373,183 and a bit miles. The sun is eight light MINUTES away, the moon 250,000 miles. Or one-and-a-half light SECONDS, if you prefer.

Why is this important? Because it's the only way you can possibly get a handle on the work of Greg Parker, the Southampton professor who photographs the universe - from the back of his garden in Brockenhurst.

For several years now Greg has been at the forefront of amateur deep-space photography, producing moving, exquisite images of the outer reaches of the heavens at distances so far away, it makes your eyes hurt just thinking about it. He's so successful he's got a book out, explaining how to do likewise.

"When I started off it was with a thing called Hyperstar and I was the only one who could take good pictures with that," he says. "The lens assembly need very, very fine tuning and at the time, no one else knew how to do that."

Thanks to his job as chair of photonics at Southampton University and his abiding curiosity - he regularly dismantled watches as a child to experiment with the jewels inside them - he worked through the problems. Now, he says, there are thousands doing the same.

His pictures of the stars, comets and deep-sky phenomena such as the horse-head nebula have appeared in such diverse locations as the NASA website, the Daily Mail and in many astronomy magazines and is being published in a glossy book.

Gazing upon these images, it's almost impossible to grasp what they mean in terms of time and space. "See this," says Greg, pointing to one star-sprinkled image with a boiling nebula at its centre, "all of those dots represent a sun like ours with their own galaxies."

Are some of them undiscovered? Could we be gazing on an entirely new solar system from a room in Brockenhurst?

"Undoubtedly, but the distances are so beyond imagination I don't think about it; it is beyond hu-man experience," he says.

Stars in the sky may be his hobby but thanks to that hobby, he's started mixing with a few stars on earth.

He's in regular correspondence with the astronomer Sir Arthur C Clarke - "I gave him a space image for his 90th birthday" - is a friend of Sir Patrick Moore and has recently got to know the latest star in the astronomy firmament - rock star and now Doctor Brian May from Queen.

Thirty-six years ago Brian started his doctoral thesis at Imperial College in London. He finally got round to finishing it last year - having spent the previous three decades, touring, singing, being a member of Queen and becoming the first (and possibly the last) person in history to play God Save the Queen on an electric guitar on the top of Buckingham Palace.

"Brian is a fantastic bloke," enthuses Greg.

"I met him for the first time at the anniversary party held to celebrate Patrick Moore's 50th year in television; he actually sought me out."

He knew Brian had put a few of his images on his website but: "He'd found out I was coming along and when I gave him a picture I'd brought for him, he just carted me off and we had a long chinwag about his thesis. He's a lovely guy. He's a spectacular character really, I was just in awe."

However, thanks to Dr Brian's enthusiasm for his subject, Greg didn't manage to get in any questions about Queen, or what it's like to be a celebrity star. "Meeting him really sorted something out for me, though. When you're you-ng you always think rock star; the lifestyle, women, fame and all the rest of it but I realised from seeing what happens to him that I'd have hated it.

"He can't do anything for five minutes; it's Brian this and Brian that and people who've never met him before call him mate and stop him for a chat but he's so good-natured about it and he's like Sir Patrick Moore, he's got time for everyone. I really do love his music so he said to me next time we'll talk about music'. I've invited him down here to see what I do so I hope he'll be able to make it one day."

If he does, he'll be in for a treat. It's hard not to be impressed with the pictures and Greg's passion for his interest. Hard, too, not to be caught up in the wonder of astrophysics, especially the way Greg explains it. Along with the iron in our blood we all contain tiny, tiny amounts of gold," he says.

"The gold is only made in supernova explosions when the star burned hydrogen, so the gold on this earth, in you, will have originally come from a star. You're actually made of star stuff."

  • Making Beautiful Deep Space Images by Greg Parker is published by Springer and available from Amazon or from newforestobservatory.com

2CR FM listener Pete beat the Echo with the headline Shooting Stars on the Breakfast programme on Monday morning